to become special
by not a straight trumpet
Summary: A fall afternoon on a train leads to unspoken feelings.


**a/n:** hoo boy that episode was a rollercoaster of emotions. mostly gay emotions. homotions, if you will.

anyway here's a bunch of vague train metaphors

* * *

"Hey, Reina?"

"Yeah?"

"When you said you'd catch me - the other day, right before I went to hang out with Asuka-senpai - did you mean it?"

"Yes." Reina tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "I'm not in the habit of saying things I don't mean, Kumiko."

"Through anything? I could fall from this train and you'd grab my hand?"

"You're not acting like yourself, it's unsettling." Kumiko patted the empty fake-leather seat beside her, the plastic covering as sticky and uncomfortable as always. "Did something happen? When you studied with her?" Kumiko could see the tips of Reina's ears turning red.

"N-nothing like that!" she yelped. "God, no. I just started thinking about things, I guess. Devotion, goals, all of that stuff."

"Nationals?"

"That's part of it." Two smiling elderly woman stared down at the two girls from a poster advertising a blood bank. "That's all that's been on anyone's mind, right?" Kumiko smiled to herself. "Nobody thought we'd get this far."

"Not even you?" Reina teased. Kumiko didn't answer.

"There're things we don't know about people."

"Obviously."

"That scares me a little, to be honest." The train turned, shaking its passengers. "There's so much going on and we just focus on our own lives, y'know? Our own lives and the ones of the people we care about."

"When did you become such a philosopher?"

"Saturday afternoon on a riverbank." Kumiko could hear the train's wheels screeching on the tracks, no doubt rickety and most likely crushing plastic bottles and the like underneath it. The image that conjured scared her for reasons she couldn't place, but she shivered nonetheless. The businesspeople trotted along in the streets below, the lights in apartments starting to glow.

"I'm not sure how you always get yourself tangled in these things, Kumiko." Reina looked up at the ceiling, at the blood bank poster and the metal roof above her.

"Neither do I, Reina." Kumiko hugged her knees to her chest, thinking that she probably looked like the roly-polies she would poke with a stick as a little kid. She hated bugs nowadays, even the memory made her want to throw up. "I wish I did."

"Is it for someone?" Reina pressed on. "Are you doing it for yourself?"

"I don't know." Kumiko looked down at the floor. "I'm just . . . scared."

"Of what?"

"Devotion, goals, that sort of thing."

"You keep on saying that. What do you mean?"

"Ah, you know. Who am I playing for? What do I want to _do?_ Everyone's got that figured out and I'm just sitting here, jumping into other people's crap for no reason."

"That's what's special about you." Reina closed her eyes, looking more than a little like a smug cat.

"Eh?"

"You have a way with people."

"I really don't," Kumiko sighed. "That's actually a pretty _terrible_ way to describe me, Reina."

"Perhaps that's not the best way to put it, then. You're . . . in tune with them, I suppose, if you'll pardon the pun." Kumiko snorted.

"Pun par-doned," she said in a robotic voice, holding back a laugh. The seat felt soft behind her back.

"You seem to know when there's something _more_ happening."

"Is this about the mask thing? Good-girl skins, or whatever?"

"You could say that."

"I'm still not sure what you mean by that."

"See?" Reina tapped on Kumiko's chest, pointing to where movies always seemed to think the heart lay, as if that proved everything she'd been arguing for after years and years. "You're too willing to become something more than yourself. You follow along with the crowd until you _are_ the crowd, at least that's what you want them to think. Truly, though?" Reina moved back her hand, tracing it down Kumiko's arm. "You're far more _special_ than Asuka-senpai."

"And _now_ you're flattering me."

"Kumiko, have I ever been the type of person to flatter you?"

"I guess not?" Kumiko paused for a moment. "All I really know is that I love the euphonium and that I want to improve. That's . . . that's it, and everything else is just floating around in the air, clouding all of my thoughts until I'm just-" she made an exploding motion with her hands "-y'know?"

"I think I understand." Reina looked out the window, at the endless city below. "You want to leave something behind, at least for _someone,_ right?"

"Y-yeah."

"I can completely understand that. It's not too different from becoming special, really. Wanting a legacy, that's something appealing. Everyone wants that, I think, but most of them are too lazy to do anything about it."

"You're awfully judgmental when you want to be, Reina." Reina shrugged, brushing her shoulder against Kumiko's.

"It's how I keep myself motivated."

"Right." The sun dropped below the trees, leaving an orange glow in its wake. Kumiko looked down at the fall's red trees and the road's red lights, all spread out in an endless labyrinth below her. "You're not gonna leave me behind once you become special, right?" Reina didn't answer, but Kumiko felt the other girl's hand resting on her own, comforting in its strange way. The train came to a halt, and the two stepped off of it with fingers intertwined, not a word about it spoken between them. A leaf fell from a tree overhead, falling to Kumiko's feet, and she picked it up before tossing it away again.


End file.
